u/I_eat_raw_onions

Does anyone else feel like their Catholic upbringing backfired in making them hetero?

​

I was fed an annoyingly rigid narrative regarding gender roles. It made straight people seem so banal and stupid. I got so tired of hearing "Men are this way and women are that way," when none of it felt relatable to my personal experience. It was also very sexist and hierarchical, often making women out to seem unadventurous, illogical, feeble, etc.

​

I would felt more asexual as a teen, maybe even potentially hetero, but then I had Jason Evert's Theology of the Body and other similar material foisted on me, and I felt very ashamed, degraded and confused. I hated being female and couldn't understand why a woman would demean themselves by being married to a man who saw himself as her head.

​

I already felt like I was weird and atypical, and I didn't know any females with the same sorts of interests as me. I had once felt solace in knowing that Jesus was my friend, but then I felt so dejected in knowing that I was nothing more than part of his stupid little bride, the Church.

​

I feel like this part of my catechesis sparked my gender dysphoria and same sex attraction. I initially tried to "fix" my SSA, and that was a disaster. I'm still learning to accept myself even though I'm an atheist now.

​

Maybe if people in the Church weren't so rigid about gender, then people wouldn't feel disconnected from their biological sex the way I was. They seem like they're really shooting themselves in the foot if you ask me.

I try not to look explicitly lesbian around certain family members. I don't own any girly clothes, so I go for more plain asexual look when I want to blend in.

I have always felt like it was stupid to classify virtues as either "masculine" or "feminine." Both religious and secular philosophies do this, and I'm sick of it. I'm inspired by fortitude, courage, and "manly" virtues. I have all due respect for more gentle and nurturing virtues which I also seek to cultivate, but the virtues that involve discipline and bravery are what stoke me up the most. I want to be strong in those attributes, but I feel like I didn't receive as much encouragement to pursue those as a girl.

What kind of hurts is, I kind of see a little truth in those gender labels. My fear is that I have a lower capacity for bravery than men because of this. It sucks, because to do the work I do, I have to be braver than the men, because they don't have to deal with the same discrimination I do as a woman.

I also wish I could get one of those father-son inspirational pep talks. I feel like I could use the advice targeted at young men, but it hurts that I'm not being addressed. Growing up religious, I heard all to many talks preparing women tradwifing while the boys got talks preparing them for leadership.

Advice is welcome.

I'm not trans. I don't believe I'm a man, but I despise being a woman with all my heart. I hate feeling like the world is constantly emasculating me, yet it thinks I have no reason to feel this way just because I'm a woman. Does anyone know how to deal with this?

I was never a porn watcher, but I have been struggling for years to stop masturbating. I don't like the lewd thoughts that come into my head while I do it. It feels just as undignified as porn.

My main moment weakness occurs when I get horny while I'm trying to sleep. I'm usually too tired to get up and do something, but I can't relax with all my raging hormones.

I am an atheist, but my religious upbringing had an impact on my moral code. I still believe that it is better spirituality not to masturbate. I used to go to confession when I felt guilty, but that is not an option for me anymore. I think that there is value in confessing what you're guilty about on a psychological level, so I was hoping that posting this might help absolve me of my guilt.

I don't know what to do about this anymore. Words of advice and encouragement are welcome.

I have crippling insomnia. I lost my religion. I hate being a woman. I can't find friends I relate to. I can't function well at work and do things I enjoy because I'm sleep deprived and burned out. I am turning into a smoldering wad of anger, anxiety and depression. This has been going up and down for decades, always hitting a new low.

Losing my faith has been a grieving process that I can't seem to ever recover from. It gave me so many good things, yet caused me so much pain. I had hope that at least things might be better for me in the afterlife. But I have trouble believing in God. I also find it hard to believe that God is good, if he even exists. I just don't imagine there being any breakthrough that can possibly expel my existential dread, aside from a lobotomy.

I think he's sexist and racist, and generally not a good apologist. He doesn't appear to have a ton of respect for the people he's debating, and doesn't seem to have much to say that has much substance, imo. A family member of mine disagreed with me and thinks I'm virtue signaling my white guilt.

I think that there can be debates about how DEI is implemented, but I don't think that CK is doing a good job of facilitating productive debates. I don't like the weird nationalistic brand of conservatism of people who want to revert to the 1950s, which is the kind of person I consider him to be. I live in a part of the US where there aren't a lot of black people I can ask personally, so I got to ask the internet.

I am all for modesty in both men and women. I do not see wearing undeniably provocative clothing to be liberating for women.

However, I think that an overemphasis on modesty can backfire in a few ways.

Often it is talked about exclusively regarding women, as though men bear no responsibility for how they view women. It can have the paradoxical effect of reducing a woman as an object of temptation that needs to be covered up, instead of using modesty to emphasize her intellect and personhood. This mentality implies that female sexuality is more degradable and inferior to male sexuality.

Modesty has a component that is somewhat subjective. Opinions on modesty very with the culture, the time, the place, the activities being done, etc. Applying rigid modesty standards to all situations is impractical and misses the point. It can cause some women to reject modesty because their experiences caused them the inconvenience and degradation that I described.

I have also heard modesty be used to enforce some people's rigid ideas about femininity. Some people go as far as to say that women should only wear skirts. Some people think all women should know how to apply makeup. I have had the experience of some crotchety old man tell me that I didn't look very feminine. For the record, I was wearing a looser women's blouse, skinny jeans, and women's dress shoes with my hair in a short bob and no makeup. I think I looked professional, and I don't think most people would have thought that I was trying to look androgynous. Once, my aunt told me I should wear brighter clothes, even though I wasn't wearing all black. I think some people just feel a need to impose their tastes on people, and modesty is often their go-to method for policing clothing, even if it doesn't really have anything to do with actual modesty.

I do not think that "girly" vibes are a quintessential component of actual feminity. I am not trying to disparage women who like makeup and have a more "feminine" aesthetic. But I feel like some women like to weaponize this contrived version of modesty to justify their shopping addictions and obsession with appearances.

Any thoughts?